NBC strategises on how to increase local market share

WHATEVER its shortcomings over the years, NBC remains the oldest bank in Tanzania, and has now come up with a new strategy aimed at reviving its lost glory.

NBC Limited Managing Director Theobald Sabi (left), outlines the bank’s ambitious five-year strategic plan designed to bring about drastic improvements to its services and products during a press briefing in Dar es Salaam on Monday.

Speaking to members on the media last Monday, NBC managing director Theobald Sabi said the success of the new strategy will be gauged by any increases in its current dwindling local market share.

However, Sabi was not in a position to state exactly what amount of market share the bank is aiming at recapturing from its competitors.

He just said this will partly be achieved through widening the bank’s branch network in the country, while also recruiting more agents. As of start of December this year, the bank has already recruited 980 agents for the big task ahead.

He said the strategy focuses on five areas namely putting the customer first, improving services, bringing the bank nearer to its customers, improving digital services, and increasing market share.

“We have invested immensely in digitalization as a way of ensuring that we satisfy our customers. We have reached a point where a customer can conduct all transactions through his mobile phone,” said Sabi.

In supporting the government’s industrialization drive, the NBC boss said in the past two years the bank has issued loans totaling 246 billion/- to retail customers and 216 billion/- to small and medium businesses.

NBC has also been facilitating large businessmen in import and export trade, he added.

“Our aim is to enable these groups to engage in industrialization and boost the government’s resolve to make the country a middle income economy in the near future,” he further explained.

With 50 branches across the country and net assets of 290.95 billion/- as at the end of 2017, NBC is the third largest bank in the country behind CRDB and NMB in terms of assets and deposits.

In its annual report for the year which ended Dec 2017, NBC reported non performing loans (NPL) amounting to 108.9 billion/- and a 12.4 per cent ratio of NPLs to total gross loans.

NBC was established in 1967 as the fully state-owned National Bank of Commerce, but was later privatized.

It is now owned by ABSA Group of South Africa, which controls 55 per cent of the stake, while the government of Tanzania owns 30 per cent and International Finance Corporation (IFC) - a wing of the World Bank - owns the remaining 15 per cent.